Beware the Batman: "Tests" Review

Anarky, the main villain of the episode. Hooboy, we'll get to his outfit in a second

Hey everybody! I'm Ryan Howitzer and, as you well know by now, you're in The Line of Fire! Today we're looking at the third episode of Cartoon Network's Beware the Batman entitled Tests. This episode was a major step in the right direction. This one got everything right in my book. The characters, the actors, the villain, everything. This is the episode that proves the writers know what they're doing and the show can capitalize on its potential. But enough introduction, let's dive right in:

The plot of this episode is two-fold. The first part revolves around Anarky (Yes, spelled with a K. Poor literacy is edgy and anti-establishment!) recruiting two street "artists" (One smashes things and the other spray paints random words) as pawns in his game against Batman. The second part is Bruce putting Tatsu through a series of tests to see if she's good enough to join him. The plot is a pretty good one. The villain finally has motivations that actually match up to his comic book counterpart. This actually feels like a situation Anarky would create.

Anarky as he appears in the comics...his costume has always sucked

He's not just a stand-in for a better villain like the past three villains have been. He's a very intimidating and awesome villain. Also, the tests with Tatsu are very interesting. We see that she is very intelligent and that she can handle herself should the situation arise. She even pulls one over on Bruce and tricks him into giving her his hand print (which she uses to get into his secret library). I can easily see her becoming Katana. Speaking of which, we see she's hiding some kind of sword in this episode. Will that come up next time? Anyway, the plot is really good in this episode. I wish it had more Jim Gordon, though. He's always one of my favorite side characters in Batman stories.

The animation in this show is really growing on me. I still wish that Batman's costume had grey in it. I don't like the monochromatic batsuits. The fight scenes are AWESOME! Really awesome! They're almost on par with Avatar: The Last Airbender. The city looks great too. My only problem with the city is that it looks empty. Where are all the people? Where are the cars? There is one other problem I have with the visuals. Anarky looks awful. Really awful. He looks like Moon Knight with an anarchy A on his chest.

I mean seriously. Just like Moon Knight

Anarky is a character with a long history of looking awful (Seriously, in most comics he looks like a Catholic Cardinal with a gold mask) but it's possible to give him a good looking and modern costume. At least give him a red costume like he usually has! The show needs more color! If you look at the images from Batman: Arkham Origins that feature Anarky, he looks decent.

He actually looks like an anarchist here

I'm sure everybody out there knows or has seen an actual anarchist. How many of them dress like Jack Kirby's version of the KKK? Just make him look like the real deal. Even if that means his costume is a Guy Fawkes mask, jeans and a hoodie. Other than that, everything looks great.

All in all, this is my favorite episode so far. I'm really looking forward to what's next for the show. Maybe we'll start seeing more familiar villains. I'd love to see the show's take on Hush or Black Mask, but I digress. This is a really good episode with a really good villain...even if he looks like Hour Man fell into a bucket of bleach. I give this one a solid 9/10.